1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to the commercialization of web services and in particular, to the interactions between subscriber and provider systems, where the web services in question are of mission critical importance to the subscriber and the use of which is offered for sale by a commercial provider.
2. Background Information
A “web service” is a means by which a software program referred to as a “client” executing on one computer can invoke functionality within another program referred to as a “service” executing on another computer over the Internet and using industry standards such as HTTP, XML, XML Schema, and WSDL. Web services have become a popular means of integrating applications within an enterprise or between an enterprise and its business partners.
In addition, there are many examples of potential services that could be offered commercially by a third party. In such a case, an enterprise using commercial web services is a “subscriber” using the web services offered by a web service “provider”.
Adoption of commercial web services has been slow, however. One reason for this is that despite numerous code generation tools, significant client development is still required especially if multiple providers are involved. This is because a very large range of technical options exist within the so-called standards concerning security, qualities of service, and other technical characteristics. Another reason is that service interfaces and these technical modes change over time as the services and/or provider evolve causing additional downstream development effort. Finally, current standards do not include business enablers such as reconciliation of subscriber usage with provider invoicing.
These issues introduce substantial risk and cost to an enterprise desiring to adopt commercial web services as part of their information technology infrastructure.